The Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is working on a national bio-energy mission to improve power generation from biomass in India.

The ministry has earmarked Rs 3,400 crore for the various incentive schemes under the biomass mission. The mission, to be launched during the 12th Five-Year Plan, will offer a policy and regulatory environment to facilitate large-scale capital investments in biomass based power stations. It will aim at improving energy efficiency in traditional biomass consuming industries, seek to develop a bio-energy city project and provide logistics support to biomass processing units. It will also propose a GIS-based National Biomass Resource Atlas to map potential biomass regions in the country.

The bio-energy mission will adopt a two-phase approach, spanning the 12th Plan in Phase I, and the 13th Plan in Phase II. There will be an evaluation of progress and review of capacity in the middle and end of each Plan. Targets for subsequent phases will be set based on the emerging cost and technology trends, both domestic and global. Each MW generated from biomass plants will be able to cover about 6,000 rural households.